Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

A Google Doodle today honouring the birth, 107 years ago, of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, founder of astrophysics.

Timewasters

A new time travel show on British TV! Timewasters is a comedy about four modern Londoners going back to the 1920s - and not feeling very welcome.

Doctor Who RPG adventures, with sound files

Four so far, from caseyjonescaseyjones on Kinja. Thanks to Rangdo for the link.

The Fifth Doctor EU Sourcebook

332 pages detailing Fifth Doctor book, audio, comics and other adventures in RPG-friendly format.

Resurrection by poem

Harriet Jones lives! In Now We Are Six Hundred, a book of Whovian poetry by Russell T Davies.

The Fibreglass Saucer Invasion

Fifty years ago tonight, southern England was invaded by flying saucers! Made of fibreglass and flour.

“We thought the government should have some sort of plan if aliens did land. So we gave them a chance to try out whatever plan they had - but they didn’t have one.”
Chris Southall, one of the masterminds of the hoax.

David Clarke, media law expert at Sheffield Hallam University and a consultant and curator for the National Archives UFO project, believes the response to the hoax was flawed.
“One of the saucers when they actually drilled into it, because it was full of this compacted, sort of papier-maché mess, actually exploded and showered the police officers with this stuff. If it had been some kind of radiation hazard, how would they have dealt with that? It would have been a disaster area. And what did they do? Just washed it down the drains.”

This is the kind of thing that gets you thrown out of UNIT.

Thanks to Robin Low on RPG.net for the link.

Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby was born 100 years ago today. Known for designing a massive chunk of the Marvel universe, his work at DC creating the Fourth World in the early 1970s is most directly relevant as a huge over-the-top space opera of human-ish space travellers fighting across the universe coming to Earth and pulling ordinary people into their adventures.

It features, among other things... an exiled son of Apokolips hiding on Earth with human companions, a heroic escape artist who is essentially a mythic take on the Houdini idea of escapologist as symbol of hope, a not-exactly-neutral observer in a time and space chair, accidental time travel, deliberate time travel, sufficiently advanced technology even by spacefaring alien civilisations, an artificial planet built for war, an undersea culture with a mix of enemies and allies, unwitting human underlings for alien invaders equipped with unearthly technology, a loch monster, a miniaturised planet with a society based on Universal horror movies, a thing called The Lump who is surprisingly amenable to conversation, superhuman propaganda, a robot boxer with a convenient off switch, a Metropolis cop defeating an alien champion with a weapon using the city’s entire power grid...

Jodie Whittaker reacts to 13th Doctor cosplay

“That is amazing!”

How do you design a Doctor Who adventure?

Rose Bailey (Chronicles Of Darkness, Cavaliers Of Mars and much more) offers some suggestions in the Sell Me On Or Off Doctor Who thread on RPG.net:

If I were going to write a Doctor Who adventure design guide, it would go something like this.
You have a setting, which can be space station or a place in Earth history or whatever.
You have a doom, which is how a lot of people in the setting are going to die if the PCs don't do something.
You have locals, the people in the setting that the PCs will meet and immediately become entangled with. They have at least one human complication, a relationship issue which impacts their ability to work together in the face of the doom. Parent/child conflicts are often good, so are struggles between morality and expedience, and distrust between coworkers is surprisingly effective.
Your doom has one or more minions. Minions usually have a distinctive look and kill or otherwise harm people in a distinctive way. You can't stop the doom by killing the minions, but the minions do most of the harm and present the most frequent threats to PCs and locals over the course of the adventure. Minions will often spend the early part of the adventure killing off locals one by one.
When the PCs fail, the consequences usually fall not on them but on the locals.
Finally, after the first few scenes, the story takes place as a crisis, encouraging or forcing the locals to work with and place trust in the PCs when they ordinarily might not. Locals are most often suspicious of PCs at the beginning and toward the end, while accepting them in the middle.

Trust Me

Before Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker stars in Trust Me, playing an identity thief in, hey, Edinburgh.

Humble Bundle of C7 Doctor Who PDFS

Humble Bundle of C7 Doctor Who PDFs starting with the current rulebook, three adventures and the First Doctor sourcebook for $1.00, aka 77p! And that includes a 30% off coupon at the C7 online store! In aid of Children In Need!

The Doctor's Daughter

Georgia Moffett is to star as Jenny for Big Finish. Sean Biggerstaff is apparently set to play a companion type.

Jodie Whittaker is the 13th Doctor

Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor!

13 questions at the BBC site.

Roll on Christmas!

In the meantime, I recommend Attack The Block, as I did when John Boyega was cast in Star Wars. :)

Terrible pencil and ink sketch by me!

A Wrinkle In Time

The first trailer for Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, which as I have previously noted features an alien threat opposed by the trinity of Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit and, yes, Mrs. Who.

Two Days

The Thirteenth Doctor will be revealed on Sunday afternoon, after the Wimbledon men's final.